Wanted! A New leader For The Lunatic Fringe.

Now that Donald Trump has been tossed out of the lunatic fringe because he endorsed vaccinations, there’s obviously a leadership vacancy waiting to be filled. And I can think of at least two individuals who are no doubt thinking that perhaps they should give it a try.

We’ll start with the guy who is already promoting himself.

I’m talking about Alex Jones, who said that Trump was now a ‘dumb ass’ because he had told the crowd in Alabama to get vaccinated last week. Incidentally, the town where Trump appeared at a rally issued an emergency order before the rally because the number of Covid infections in that location have climbed out of sight.

But that didn’t stop a lady at the rally who told an interviewer that she wasn’t about to get vaccinated because she didn’t ‘trust’ the CDC. Like she’s got all kinds of evidence to prove that you shouldn’t trust the CDC. She’s got the same kind of evidence that Trump used when he said that vaccines caused autism back in 2016.

Before I mention the other potential leaders for the lunatic fringe, let me make it clear what such leadership actually entails.

First of all, you have to put up a website which contains various home remedies and snake-oil potions that fringe lunatics can buy. Because these folks not only don’t trust the CDC or the FDA, but they also know ‘for a fact’ that anything the government wants you to do is just another attempt to take away your God-given ‘rights.’

As far as I can recall, the lunatic fringe market was first developed and exploited by Glenn Beck whose TV show featured ads for freeze-dried food that would remain fresh in your personal bunker for at least fifty years, or for gold and silver that would be a hedge when the worldwide financial collapse finally occurred.

Beck wasn’t so much into promoting so-called health remedies that could be purchased online. Those products were the stock-in-trade for Rush Limbaugh, who even had a non-prescription medicine which allegedly reduced a swollen prostate gland. Frankly, I’m surprised that Rush didn’t push some ersatz treatment for lung cancer before he died.

You may not think that the market for selling crap to the lunatic fringe isn’t all that great. You couldn’t be more wrong. Because even if the number of lunatic fringe consumers is only a small fraction of the population that goes shopping online, just remember that the number of websites and podcasts catering to the lunatic fringe isn’t all that great.

Alex Jones’ website, Newsmax, gets 35 million visits a month — that’s 1.5 million a day. Breitbart gets around 1.75 million a day, many of them probably also look at Newsmax on the same day. In a country of 320 million people, of whom maybe one-third go on their computers or phone websites every day, that’s not such a big market. But again, remember that if on e out of a hundred viewers are tempted to buy the crap you are advertising, that’s still 1,600 calls.

And I have a feeling that the lunatic fringe population will be responsive to the ads being pushed to them by promoters like Breitbart and Alex Jones, because this is also a population that, for the most part, is sitting around at home with nothing better to do.

How do I know this? Because when Rush was doing his daily show, it was picked up by radio stations all over the United States but no matter where you lived, you had to tune in between 9 A.M. and 3 P.M. Now who besides some travelling salesmen are listening to the radio between 9 and 3? Nobody who’s working, that’s for sure. The most popular AM shock jock in my area, Howie Carr, is on every day between 3 P.M. and 6 P.M. Who’s home? Housewives, retired guys, and kids playing hooky from school.

Having said all that, my next leading contender to head the lunatic fringe would be Ted Nugent, the hard-rock musician who continues to tell people to resist getting vaccinated even though he almost died from Covid-19 in April of this year. He also ‘knows for a fact’ that face masks are no good, because he wears a face mask when he goes hunting in the Winter and he can see his breath coming through the mask.

Ted also has a store on his website, but right now he’s just peddling a couple of ugly hats, a flag with some kind of stupid slogan on it and a photo of himself in the Oval Office with Donald Trump. The photo is autographed by him but not by Trump. Thirty bucks for that?

Remember how Trump got all kinds of good feedback from his supporters when Hillary referred to them as ‘deplorables’ in 2016? I think that what Alex Jones or Ted Nugent need to do is start a political movement called the Lunatic Fringe Movement, or LFM. Imagine all the crap they could sell with that logo on clothing, flags and of course yard signs. I can see it now — the sign will say: “I’m a proud member of the lunatic fringe.”

Maybe later today I’ll try to trademark the phrase ‘lunatic fringe.’ After all, Trump trademarked MAGA in 2012. And after I get it trademarked, I’ll sell it to Roger Stone.

Sh*t! I’m going to go to the Patent Office website right now.